


Time Wasted Loving You

by nerdqueenenterprise



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Angst, Heavy Angst, M/M, Mentions of Death, Mild Sexual Content, hurt!paul, spoilers for ep01s12 vaulting ambition, very mild gore in the last paragraph so watch out for that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-27
Updated: 2018-01-27
Packaged: 2019-03-10 06:43:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13496870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerdqueenenterprise/pseuds/nerdqueenenterprise
Summary: Paul doesn't want to leave this dreamland, because it means losing the man he loved, and it feels like that would be forever if he wakes up. Hugh tries to push him away.





	Time Wasted Loving You

    “Every minute you waste -”

    “I know! I know, Hugh, I know.” Agony is so painfully clear in Paul’s features. “Just… let me pretend for just a moment longer. Please.”

Hugh reaches over and squeezes Paul’s shaking hand in his.

    “Okay. Okay.”

Paul turns his face away again, squeezing his eyes shut, corners of his lips tense.

    “What do you need?”

    “You’re dead. Out - out in the real world, you’re dead. You’re not there anymore. You’re gone. Forever. I -” The hiccup in his breath is tiny, but Hugh catches it nevertheless. “I held your body. And you were cold.”

    “Paul.”

    “I can’t go back out there. I can’t. Hugh, please.” He meets Hugh’s eyes. “Don’t make me leave.”

    “Love -”

    “You’re all I have, Hugh. Don’t make me leave you. Please.”

    “Love, if the mycelial network dies, it’s taking us with it.”

    “I kno- I know.” The hiccups are getting more noticeable, Paul’s voice rough and broken. Hurting. “I know, I know, but can’t I - all I want - Hugh, all I want is you.”

    “I know that, love.”

    “And the only place where - the only - you’re only here. You’re nowhere else. You’d - you’d be gone.”

Hugh pulls him close and Paul collapses against his chest.

    “Don’t make me leave you. Please, Hugh, I’ll do anything. Anything. Just let me stay.”

    “The longer you stay -”

    “The longer I stay the longer I get to spend with - with the love of my life. Please, Hugh. Please.” He’s tearing at Hugh’s shirt now, hands unsteady.

Hugh kisses his temple. He can’t not, not with how distressed Paul is, how he’s close to crying, how he’s shaking.

    “Starfleet Protocol mandates that -”

    “I don’t care about Starfleet Protocol! I don’t want it! Don’t you see, Hugh, all I -”

    “Sh-sh-sh, let me speak. Starfleet Protocol mandates that if you die aboard a Starship, your body will be cryogenically preserved and brought back so you can have a burial of the kind you specified in your will.”

    “No. Please, I can’t - I can’t watch them bury -”

    “Paul. My body is still there. And my mind is still here. Theoretically that’s all there is to life. Body and mind. If you - what I’m saying is, if you save the mycelial network, you’ll be able to bring me back.”

    “You don’t know that.”

    “I know that I love the most brilliant mind in the galaxy, and I know that he loves me too. And I believe in that love.”

    “Please let me stay. Just for a bit.”

    “For a bit.”

They stay like this, Paul crumpled against Hugh’s front, Hugh’s hands in his hair and his breath ghosting over the side of Paul’s face.

    “Cuddles?” Hugh asks eventually.

Paul’s “please” is almost a sob.

They curl up under the blankets, Paul crowding close, holding on to Hugh’s sides and breathing him in.

    “Are you sure - are you sure this isn’t - isn’t the real world?”

    “Yes. I’m sorry, Paul -”

    “Please, just - let me stay just a little longer.”

    “You’re wasting time.”

    “So what if I am?” Paul’s head shoots up, his eyes big and fearful. “What if I am, what if I don’t want to go back to a world where - where you’re cold and lifeless in a cryo tube somewhere? What if I just want to hold you, and feel you be alive?”

     “I - I know. But this isn’t real, it’s just -”

     “Then let’s make it real.” Paul kicks the covers partway to the side, getting on his knees, fingers under Hugh’s shirt, pushing him onto his back so he can straddle him. “Let’s make it real. Let’s make this our reality.”

He kisses Hugh then, harsh and desperate for the feeling, tears at his clothes and pressing into his skin too hard.

    “Paul…”

    “Please. Just let me have this. Just - please, Hugh, don’t make me leave you. I love you.” His lips press against the side of Hugh’s neck in an approximation of a kiss. “I love you, I love you, I love you, please, let me stay, Hugh, I’m begging you.”

Hugh pushes him away and pretends he doesn’t hear the noise of pure anguish that Paul makes.

    “It’s not going to make you happy, my love.”

Paul is teetering above him, and Hugh fears that if he weren’t holding onto him, Paul would collapse.

    “You don’t know that! You don’t know anything. I might never see you again. Don’t send me away. Please.”

    “Then let’s do this properly. Come here, love.”

Paul whimpers softly and lets himself curl into Hugh’s embrace. And Hugh kisses him, warm and strong, pulling him as close as they can get, rolling them back onto their sides and keeping the kiss going. 

    “Let me make you feel good, okay? I love you too, Paul, alright? I love you so much.”

He dips his fingers under the hem of Paul’s shirt, nudging Paul’s belly before running the palm of his hand all the way up to his chest.

    “Okay?” he asks again.

Paul lets out a wobbly breath.

    “Nothing’s changed, okay? Paul?”

    “Except that you’re dead.”

He can feel Paul’s body already reacting to him, making him more sex-heady than he’d like, probably, because no matter how much Paul loves burrowing himself into his work, at some point his body will always start demanding attention. And right now it has been a while.

    “You will undead me. I know that. I believe in you.”

Another heavy wet breath against his neck, and then Paul’s fingers slip under his shirt too, almost shy.

    “Okay?” he asks.

Hugh smiles and kisses him again.

    “Okay. You want to lose the shirts?”

There’s a hint of, well, of the old Paul in that tentative smile flashing across Paul’s face, of the guy who’d shove him against a wall and kiss him silly and take him for a tumble.

 

And so they lose the shirts and Paul holds on to the back of Hugh’s neck and his shoulders while Hugh kisses and bites down his torso and they tangle together in the sheets until they can’t tell where one of them ends and the other begins. Hugh keeps a hand securely in Paul’s hair while they move together, gasping hot breaths. Paul eventually suppresses his moans in Hugh’s skin, pressing close like he’s trying to fuse them together, repeating, “I love you,” over and over with every last breath he has.

 

When it’s over, Paul cries. He tries not to, but his body isn’t obeying him.

    “You need to go,” Hugh whispers into his hair, trying to soothe a hand over Paul’s back.

    “Please don’t make me leave you. Please let me stay. Don’t you want me to stay?”

    “I do. That’s why you have to go.”

 

There’s a last kiss, a last touch, and then Hugh makes him follow the music.

  
  
  


He really shouldn’t have come here. The morgue is cold and badly lit and the walls are scaring him with their whispers, the eyes that follow him and the fingers around his ankles.

Maybe he is going mad.

Hugh is dead. Neck snapped clean through. Someone laid him out like he’s just sleeping, glass coffin reflecting Paul’s face and overlapping it with Hugh’s.

    “I’m going to save you,” he promises, pressing a hand against the glass like he could reach through and touch Hugh. “I promise I’ll save you.”

The glass is cold against his lips, and the kiss doesn’t make Hugh wake up again. 

Their faces overlap still.

    “And then I’ll marry you, and then I’ll ask you whether you want kids, too,” Paul promises, his voice holding. 

His breath leaves a tiny cloud of white until it dissolves in the air.

Paul’s feet turn and his body leaves. His heart remains, beating and breaking and oozing blood, quivering in the crypt where his love lies, frozen and dead. 

**Author's Note:**

> angsty :3  
> aaaaanyways if you don't hate me enough, please leave a comment and come say hi over at [ @shroom-boi ](http://www.shroom-boi.tumblr.com)


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